Questions

A regular, drop-in, in-person session for men, built around Interval Breathing — intervals of slow, even breathing paced by light, alternating with silence. The aim is deceleration: the breathing takes the speed off gently, and the silences ask you to sit with a little of what comes up; block by block, the system settles. The same principle runs through the hill walk, and, in time, perhaps clubs. It is not therapy, not a lecture, and not a group to process the past. It looks forward. You come to build something, not to be fixed.

The modern world is very good at keeping us stimulated and switched on — demand, alerts, comparison, a system built to farm our attention. Almost nothing trains the opposite: the deliberate settling-down. Most of us have plenty of practice speeding up and very little slowing down. The Practice trains the missing half — learning to govern your own state — plainly, and with no doctrine to sign up to.

The destination is similar; the route is honest about how we actually get there. Sitting in cold silence from a standing start rarely works — the body is still running hot. So we bring the arousal down in stages: rounds of slow, even breathing, each followed by a pause, so that by the time the long silence comes the descent has already been rehearsed several times. We are landing a plane, not dropping it on the runway. And there is no promised blissful state at the end — just the sit, done again. That honesty is deliberate.

Breathing at around five to six breaths a minute is one of the few levers you can pull by hand that reaches the involuntary nervous system. At that pace, heart rate, breath and blood-pressure reflexes fall into step, vagal (calming) tone rises, and heart-rate variability — a broad marker of a flexible, resilient system — goes up. In plain terms: a slow, even breath tells the body it is safe, and the body listens.

Carbon dioxide is not just waste gas. It is the main trigger for the urge to breathe, and it is what lets your blood release its oxygen into the tissues that need it. The feeling of "I must breathe now" is driven far more by rising CO2 than by a lack of oxygen.

If you are used to breathing more than you need, that alarm fires early and easily. Training it is optional here, and it lives on the hill: for those who come back wanting more, a geared system paces breath to steps and gently raises the threshold, so the same rise in CO2 no longer feels so urgent. The result is breathing that is quieter, slower and steadier. This framing draws on the Buteyko tradition alongside mainstream respiratory physiology. In the Hall there is no breath restriction at all; the pace is slow and even, and nothing is held.

Chronic low-grade stress keeps the breath faster and higher in the chest than it needs to be; so do mouth-breathing, long sedentary hours, and a nervous system that is rarely allowed to fully stand down. Breathing is one of the few functions that is both automatic and trainable — which means bad habits set in quietly and stay. Over months, over-breathing becomes the resting default, tolerance for CO2 drops, and the urge to breathe gets touchy. None of it is a character flaw. It is a trained pattern, and it can be trained back.

Because everything silence promises is on the other side of tolerating a little internal discomfort. Nobody decelerates from a hundred miles an hour by sitting alone for an hour; the momentum is too much, the heat is unbearable, and you would rightly never try it again. So the exposure is progressive: the silences start at four minutes and lengthen as your tolerance grows, with the breath as a handrail between them. Expect a busy, cloudy mind — that is normal, not failure; it is the heat coming off as the system slows. We are not chasing a blank mind, and there is nothing to fail at.

Not out of anything against women — the room simply works differently when it is men only. A lot of men will not walk into a wellness, yoga or meditation space; the look and language of it says not for me, and they stay stuck. They tend to show up more readily for something plain, physical and shoulder-to-shoulder — competence first, connection sideways, no one asked to bare their soul on a cushion. A room of men doing hard, quiet work together is a specific and useful thing. That is what this is.

Be sensible and take advice. The breathing is slow and even, and nothing is held or restricted; a long sit and an uphill walk are still real physical stimuli. If you are pregnant, or have a heart condition, high or unmanaged blood pressure, epilepsy, diabetes, a respiratory condition, or are recovering from surgery — among others — talk to your doctor before you come, and go easy when you do. Nothing here is forced. You can breathe normally, sit anything out, pause, or leave at any moment; that is always your call.

Please read this plainly: The Practice is not therapy, and it is not treatment for any condition. It is not a substitute for professional mental-health care, and it will not resolve trauma. Some men find slow breathing steadying; others find silence, or time with their own thoughts, activating rather than calming. If you live with PTSD or another condition, keep whatever support you already have, speak to your doctor or therapist about whether this is a good fit, and be free to stop the moment anything feels like too much. If you are in crisis, this is not the place to turn first — reach out to a professional or a crisis line.

No. It is drop-in by design: a first-timer and someone who has come for months both get a complete session in one morning. There is no sequence to catch up on and nothing to be good at. Everything is self-paced, and the hard parts are self-limiting — you take only as much as you choose.

It is free for now. Bring nothing. Wear something you can move in. For the morning sessions, arrive any time from 6:45am for tea; we begin at 7:00am (if you're new, please come at 6:45am).

It is new; some mornings a handful, some mornings two of us, and the session runs either way. Early has its advantages.

Times and locations are on this site — just turn up. If you're not sure, message me first and ask me anything: wa.me/447424799151. The one-way WhatsApp channel carries changes and announcements: join it here.